Hit Man

man at the top. The big guy.”
    “Chomping doughnuts and thinking of you.”
    “But then you think about it afterward, and there’s just no way. Even if he said something like that, would Bascomb pass it on? And then when I started to look at the whole picture. . . ”
    “Tilt.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Well,” she said. “What kind of a line have we got on Bascomb? We don’t know his name or his address or how to get hold of him. What does that leave us?”
    “Damn little.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. We don’t need a whole hell of a lot, Keller. And we do know something.”
    “What?”
    “We know three people he wanted killed,” she said. “That’s a start.”
    Keller, dressed in a suit and tie and sporting a red carnation in his buttonhole, sat in what he supposed you would call the den of a sprawling ranch house in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He had the TV on with the sound off, and he was beginning to think that was the best way to watch it. The silence lent a welcome air of mystery to everything, even the commercials.
    He perked up at the sound of a car in the driveway, and, as soon as he heard a key in the lock, he triggered the remote to shut off the TV altogether. Then he sat and waited patiently while Paul Ernest Farrar hung his topcoat in the hall closet, carried a sack of groceries to the kitchen, and moved through the rooms of his house.
    When he finally got to the den, Keller said, “Well, hello, Bascomb. Nice place you got here.” Keller, leading a scoundrel’s life, had ended the lives of others in a great variety of ways. As far as he knew, though, he had never actually frightened anyone to death. For a moment, however, it looked as though Bascomb (né Farrar) might be the first. The man turned white as Wonder Bread, took an involuntary step backward, and clasped a hand to his chest. Keller hoped he wasn’t going to need CPR.
    “Easy,” he said. “Grab a seat, why don’t you?
    Sorry to startle you, but it seemed the best way. No names, no pack drill, right?”
    “What do you think you’re doing in my house?”
    “The crossword puzzle, originally. Then when the light failed I had the TV on, and it’s a lot better when you don’t know what they’re saying. Makes it more of an exercise for the imagination.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’d have joined you for breakfast,” he said, “but who knows if you even go out for it? Who’s to say you don’t have your oat bran muffin and decaf at the pine table in the kitchen? So I figured I’d come here.”
    “You’re not supposed to get in touch with me at all,” Farrar said sternly. “Under any circumstances.”
    “Give it up,” Keller said. “It’s not working.”
    Farrar didn’t seem to hear him. “Since you’re here,” he said, “of course we’ll talk. And there happens to be something I need to talk to you about, as a matter of fact. Just let me get my notes.”
    He slipped past Keller and was reaching into one of the desk drawers when Keller took him by the shoulders and turned him around. “Sit down,” he said, “before you embarrass yourself. I already found the gun and took the bullets out. Wouldn’t you feel silly, pulling the trigger and all it does is go click ?”
    “I wasn’t reaching for a gun.”
    “Maybe you wanted this, then,” Keller said, dipping into his breast pocket. “A passport in the name of Roger Keith Bascomb, issued by authority of the government of British Honduras. You know something? I looked on the map, and I couldn’t find British Honduras.”
    “It’s Belize now.”
    “But they kept the old name for the passports?” He whistled soundlessly. “I found the firm’s literature in the same drawer with the passport. An outfit in the Caymans, and they offer what they call fantasy passports. To protect yourself, in case you’re abducted by terrorists who don’t like Americans. Would you believe it—the same folks offer other kinds of fake ID as well. Send them a check and a photo and they’ll set you up as an agent of the National Security Resource. Wouldn’t that be handy?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Keller sighed. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you. Your name isn’t Roger Bascomb, it’s Paul Farrar. You’re not a government agent, you’re some kind of paper-pusher in the Social Security Administration.”
    “That’s just a cover.”
    “You used to be married,” Keller went on, “until your wife left you for another man.